


Snippets

by Elster



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-06
Updated: 2018-05-06
Packaged: 2019-05-03 05:33:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14561961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elster/pseuds/Elster
Summary: Just a place to collect the short bits I wrote for tumblr.





	1. Cecil is not a morning person

Cecil is not a morning person. In fact, before he had his first coffee he’s an unholy thing, in the vague shape of the slouched form of a man, obscured by a cloud of cloying night, sightless, shuffling around aimlessly, ungracefully, menacingly, unresponsive, intermittently murmuring in ancient tongues. 

Then he takes a hammer. And there is shouting. And screaming. And angry chanting. Finally, coffee. 

And then the cloud of cloying night vanishes, banned by the ritual, and he is still not really awake, but he’s visibly human again, with bad bedhair and pyjamas that have pictures of little playing kittens on them, so… yeah.


	2. The weird was within you the whole time

The other scientists say Night Vale is getting to Carlos, say he’s a bit off, just slightly out of touch, changed from the sober person he was before, going on odd philosophical tangents, unfazed by a lot of Night Vale’s weirdness only to hatch loudicrous theories. 

Carlos is aware of this and sometimes he tells himself it’s the town that makes him think and say and do things he wouldn’t have otherwise. But actually he knows: that people always thought he was a bit off unless he tried very hard to be like them. 

That even before he came to Night Vale there were a lot of things he thought about and said and did only to fit in as opposed to other things he tried not to think about or talk about or do for the same reason. That kind of compromise is just what being part of a community means, right?

Like: Death and the nature of time and its perception aren’t topics open for casual conversation and Carlos accepts this, though he’s never understood why, when they are so universal and fascinating. Do other people really think so much about sports or the weather? It seems unlikely.

The other scientists call Night Vale baffling and oppressive, complain about all these arbitrary rules about what not to think and talk about and do. Carlos doesn’t really mind. He is used to being baffled and following arbitrary rules. Night Vale is certainly different, but not that different.


	3. Carlos was this know-it-all kid

Carlos was this know-it-all kid who started reading all these children’s science books in the library when he was like five and would correct adults on what this or that dinosaur was called, and that whales weren’t fish.

He was friends with a few other kids his age, children who lived close by for most of his childhood and who he saw every day at school. The kind of effortless friendship where they’d build windmills from plastic bottles for a school project and Carlos would get caught up in that while the others would start playing video games halfway through. 

A few years later Carlos was the one who’d think of putting bubble bath in the public fountain in the mall. He’d get banned because he didn’t run away but stayed to watch the foam creep over the tiled floor until it reached the doors of the first shops. Because what is the point of a scientific experiment when there’s nobody to observe it? Carlos had never liked the echoing splatter of the fountain anyway and the foam fixed that, made the noise oddly soothing.

Carlos grew apart from his friends in painless increments until he was not even living in the same place any longer. There were other people, the world was full of people after all. Carlos would think of the people he had known in the past every now and then, and then he would get distracted by all the things he didn’t know yet. Still, Carlos didn’t think of these friendships as something that had ended, they were just suspended, things that still existed in a more abstract form until they could exist again in the reality of space and time. 

There is that theory people told Carlos about, that this is not how it works, but Carlos doesn’t have conclusive evidence either way yet.


	4. Cure for a bad mood

Cecil’s home in the evening, taking a shower and humming silly songs under his breath, then puttering around in a fluffy patterned bathrobe, waiting for Carlos who texted him he’d be longer.

When Carlos comes home he’s in a bad mood, disgruntled and distracted and trying not to be so ill-tempered, but the experiment went all wrong and the data was lost and he had to clean up the whole mess and he banged his head and jammed his finger and the world is just awful.

And then Cecil grabs him and starts singing ‘Poisoning Pigeons in the Park’ and waltzing Carlos around the room, and he doesn’t stop until they end up laughing and bumping into furniture and stopping only to make out on the couch.


End file.
